Retirement is inevitable. How you live it is up to you. Today’s retirement is about rediscovering life by doing all the things your responsibilities towards your family forbade you from doing. It is about rediscovering independence, as opposed to dependence on children. In fact, seniors now look forward to their retirement as a phase to travel, take up long lost or new hobbies, and indulge in new experiences.
The flip side is that retirement is a phase where you may not earn any income. It also may be laced with higher medical costs. Therefore, you will depend upon your savings and returns on all investments. This should make it quite clear why retirement planning is important.
So, What Is A Retirement Plan?
Simply put, a retirement plan is a type of life insurance which helps accumulate a corpus and generate a regular income post your working years. To help you maintain your lifestyle without compromise.
Various articles on retirement planning can leave you feeling overwhelmed. The jargon, the numbers, all sound so complex. Here is a simplified version that should help you make better decisions. Yet, there are some rules that apply to all when it comes to the best ways to plan for your retirement.
1) How much to save: Take some time out for this one, seek professional help too if you want. Think about the age you would want to retire at. Calculate the amount you think you will need for daily expenses and other commitments. This number becomes the financial goal you will work towards.
2) Consider multiple factors: Here are the important ones:
Never forget to factor inflation. Even the best laid plans will yield poor returns if the effects of inflation are not built in. Therefore, your retirement plans india must account for future price projections, especially medical inflation.
Your retirement phase may bring health concerns. Invest in good health insurance plans that safeguard your finances, in case of any health-related emergency.
Consider all tax benefits as well as tax deductions on returns on investments.
Assess your current and projected income and expenditure levels. Then keeping your financial goal in mind, work towards increased savings and rationalizing expenses.
Understand the risk landscape of all your investments, evaluate your risk appetite depending upon life stage and plan your asset portfolio.
3) Start saving early: YOLO (You Only Live Once) but retirement is a part of that one life! So, the earlier you start, the more you will save. When you just start working, your income is low and so are your responsibilities. You will be able to save a higher percentage of your income in your early years. It makes good sense to allocate a fixed percentage of your income towards your retirement corpus. Remember to increase the amount of savings in proportion to the increase in income. Try and invest all surplus income such as salary increments, commissions, and bonuses in order to reap benefits later. Also, try and reduce all debts well before retirement.
4) Long-term care insurance: This is highly recommended as, as the name suggests, these plans offer funding for extended periods of time. They cover expenses towards nursing, assisted living or day care (for adults), and at-home care for the elderly. Given the increase in life expectancy rates and spiralling costs of living, investing in long term care insurance is beneficial.
5) Choose the right plan: Finally, now that we have looked at how to do retirement planning, we must evaluate the different options of retirement plans. You could look at either retirement plans / guaranteed regular income plans or market linked plans.
Retirement Plans
Annuity plans or pension plans are great options when choosing tools for the retirement planning exercise. These plans are typically worked out in a manner that allows them to accumulate funds and then ensure regular payouts during the retirement years. The objective is stability and therefore pension plans generally invest the accumulated corpus in conservative instruments such as government bonds or securities. IndiaFirst Life Guaranteed Pension Plan is a great option as it offers a guaranteed payout.
Whole Life Income Plans
Saving for a rainy day is always a good move. Using an insurance plan as a tool to ensure savings for retirement is a very smart move. These plans allow you to accumulate a corpus over an extended time period. They ensure you are disciplined and organized about putting away some money on a regular basis. This corpus is then returned to you in the form of regular payouts, and you get life coverage as well. All in all, it’s a great package. There are some interesting insurance plans options when you want to look at long term security such as the IndiaFirst Life Long Guaranteed Income Plan.
How to plan your retirement is really up to you. Every individual is different, and everyone will have different ideas about what they would like to do during their retirement phase. Whatever it is, retirement planning is an important activity which needs to be carefully planned and efficiently executed. Next time you feel overwhelmed while thinking of how to plan for retirement or the different ways to plan for your retirement, just keep calm and refer to this article.